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Inside the Mind of a Publishing Powerhouse: Insights from Dixie · The Expert's Journey: Helping Speakers & Authors Succeed!

• 0:14
  SPEAKER_01: Welcome back to The Experts Journey.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_01: Today I get to turn the tables and do something I never get to do.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_01: Into Dixie Carlton, my brilliant co-host, a word magician and publishing powerhouse.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_01: Dixie spent nearly two decades that I know of helping authors tap into their inner genius and turning stories into dialogues and ideas into influence.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_01: So we're going to dig into how she fell into this life and why she's such an expert at coaching great stories out of people.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_01: Good morning, Dixie.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_00: No impression.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_00: Sounds pretty interesting.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, you've got a fascinating background.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_01: I think I met you somewhere in the early 2010s.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_01: And at that stage, you're a publisher.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_01: And I suppose I've known you ever since then.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_01: So what inspired you to step into the publishing world?
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_00: It's a little bit of a story in itself.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_00: I had a company that was a promotional products company that I sold after 10 years.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_00: And I found myself short of whatever I could do next because I had a restraint of trade.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_00: So someone suggested that I sit down and write about all of the advice I've been giving people for the previous 10 years.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_00: So I did that book found its way accidentally to America and a co-author who helped me do a revised, universally better version with more Americanisms in it.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_00: And while that was taking place, I also joined a writing program that was all about teaching us how to do great anthology work.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_00: So putting us together with a bunch of other authors, I think it was a very first of its kind.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_00: A bunch of us all got together, learned about the process of writing and marketing and publishing through the great John Egan, who had worked with people like Mark Victor Hansen and Jack Canfield at that point.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_00: So he had a lot of information to share.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_00: And I was fascinated by how that all worked.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_00: So while that was happening and that book was coming out that he was developing, my other book in America was being developed, and it all coincided with happening at once.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_00: And so I was learning and writing and enjoying, and I got to go to America and speak on the topic of what I had originally written about with the promotional products.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_00: And my book went to bestseller status.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_00: And I had a really good time with the whole concept of, oh, I'm an author now.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_00: Then I won a couple of awards.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_00: And finally, I started getting asked by other professional speakers to help them with their books.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_00: And the idea was born that I should maybe do that as a new career path.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_00: I already had a marketing background, so it was an easy decision to make.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_00: But I stumbled my way through for the first few years.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_00: And back in those days, this was 2003, 2004, Amazon was in its infancy.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_00: We didn't really talk about ebooks at that point.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_00: You had to do a lot more to get your book listed on Amazon, especially if you were not in the United States or England.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_00: And so I learned from the ground up what had to happen and just kept passing that information and knowledge on to other authors.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_00: And I accidentally fell into creating my own publishing company.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, cool.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_01: So what was the first book that you helped publish that wasn't your own?
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, that is such a good question.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_00: I think I did a couple of anthology series for other people.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_00: So I've done a few of those over the years, which has served me well.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_00: There was one that comes to mind that was about mother-in-laws and daughter-in-laws.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_00: And it was written by a woman who wanted to explain the difference between the way a mother would see her son and the way a wife would see her husband, and that being the same person.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_00: And that was a fascinating book to do.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_00: There were a few that I did back in those days that come to mind that were mostly business books, but from different perspectives of how they wanted to be seen as leaders or marketing books and things.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's the only one that specifically stands out as an early days book.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_01: Interesting.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_01: So what do you enjoy most about working with authors and speakers and experts, I suppose?
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_00: I love the fact that I get to learn so much about the topics that they are so passionate about.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, many of the people that I work with come from such diverse backgrounds and areas of expertise.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_00: So I learn from them and expand my own knowledge.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_00: And I was born with an innate curiosity that is unstoppable.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_00: So I get to satisfy my curiosity about lots of things, but I also get to work with people and help them with their confidence about the content and the information I'm sharing.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_00: And so as we develop their concepts and their stories, they grow in their confidence about sharing that.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_00: And I get to learn a lot.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_00: So it's a mutually fun win-win thing.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_00: And essentially, I'm working with people who are in their own small way changing the world.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_00: One book, one story, one speech at a time.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_01: So I imagine you've seen a lot of change over the years.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_01: How has your career evolved over that time?
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_00: Well, that's such a funny question because there have been a couple of times and I've tried to walk away from it.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_00: At one point with the global financial crisis, that's the one.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_00: At one point the tax all turned off and we noticed that no one was paying, no one was wanting to do anything like this anymore.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_00: And so I pivoted out to back up to just general marketing and started learning a lot more about social media and how that all worked.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_00: And then got to apply that back into the publishing work I started doing again a year or so later.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_00: How has it evolved?
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_00: I have evolved from being a marketing specialist, marketing and advertising specialist, into being a publishing specialist working with nonfiction in the self-publishing arena mostly, but also tapping into the traditional publishing arena and also literary agent fields.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_00: So I've got a broad level of knowledge in that area.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_00: I've also, through all of that, become a professional speaker because I recognized earlier that there was a diff, sorry, not a difference, there was a huge parallel between being a professional speaker and being a writer of great content and books.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_00: So I've always sat there firmly between marketing, speaking, and publishing.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_00: And that's just continued to grow.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_01: So I've noticed you often dive into tough conversations and taboo topics.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_01: How do you guide audiences to learn about things that are discomforting and explore deeper meaning in your own writing?
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_00: I love to write and learn and explore things that are a little bit off-topic for a lot of people.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_00: Everything from how people feel about grieving, sex, death, values.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_00: Like I love to learn about things.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_00: I love to learn about the kind of conversations people have about tough topics, and those would be some good examples.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_00: So I do explore deeply and have those deep conversations.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_00: And so then that opens me up to being able to have more and more deep, interesting conversations.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_00: So it just is something that grows.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_00: I like to be able to sit down and really get to know someone, find out what really makes them tick.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_00: How does that impact on other people that they are impacting on?
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_00: And I guess I've been blessed well to be trained as a coach.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_00: And that took about two and a half, nearly three years to do that training.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_00: So it was fairly intensive.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_00: And through that, I learned how to have conversations that were direct, sensitive, and very much giving and taking reciprocal conversations where you really did get to know someone at a deeper level.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_00: And all of those skills were learned and developed and expanded over the years.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_00: So I work in my homeplace.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_01: So you've described your work as getting paid to deep dive into fascinating lives and topics, which I found on your website.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_01: What's your favorite storytelling moment or author story that exemplifies that?
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_00: I have worked recently with a three-times veteran Afghanistan helicopter pilot.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_00: So she served three times in Afghanistan as a helicopter pilot for the Royal Australian Navy.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_00: I got to learn things about her life and her business and what she did and how she got there through developing her storytelling, which was already fantastic when I started working with her, but developing that content into a book that actually impacts on other people in much bigger ways than what you might imagine.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_00: Being able to deep dive into some of the training, the preparation that she had to do was deeply fascinating.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_00: And on the heels of that, a few years earlier, I had worked with someone who had done uh a book about his time being an intelligence officer, rebuilding Afghanistan after the first part of the war finished.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_00: So him talking about being part of that rebuilding process back in 2004 and how that impacted on him and his family when he returned.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_00: So having those two examples that built on each other from my perspective, learning about all of the different facets of that.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_00: Like one of them came back with very bad PTSD, the other came back with no PTSD.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_00: And the differences, the different experiences that they had as a result of that, I found that as being perhaps the most fascinating to people that I've worked with in the last few years.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_00: And that is because of the level of storytelling that they were able to share with me.
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_00: Not only what they shared with me that could be reshared, but the things that I learned that obviously stay very much under wraps.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_00: So being in that opportunity, having those opportunities to be privileged to have conversations that are so meaningful and so deeply fascinating is, yeah.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, exactly.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_01: Really is a great opportunity for people who like learning and like discovering new information.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_01: I imagine that's some of the best parts of your day.
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_01: Looking through the books that you've published with people, the genres cover everything from memoirs to self-help to historical fiction and romance, I believe.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_01: How do you support such a diverse range of authors while maintaining quality and messaging?
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_00: I want to preface that, the answer to this, by saying there are a lot of publishing services companies out there now who are saying, I'll help you boot, do your book, I'll help you publish, etc.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_00: And a lot of them run a very fairly cookie-cutter type process.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_00: What I've always done is approached every single author as a completely new project, a new person.
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_00: While they may have some things in common, and some of the processes that I develop with them and share with them to get their stories out are similar.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_00: There is a uniqueness to every single author that we approach working with.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_00: And when I say we, I have a team that also deals with the editing and the design and the post-publishing parts.
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_00: But every single author has a unique story and a unique reason for wanting to share their information.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_00: So as long as I keep it fresh for them and help them to understand that they are not just part of a factory system or a cookie-cutter process, then it helps to make everyone that we work with very uniquely special in their own ways as well.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_01: Excellent.
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_01: Great way of putting it.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_01: So you've been presenting internationally for over 20 years now.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_01: What's a key experience that shaped your approach to public speaking?
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_00: Turning up in America to present at a conference after I did my first book and realizing how underprepared I was.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_00: So I ranked that as one of my all-time best experiences professionally.
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_00: And then I got up on stage and I think I completely blew it.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_00: Now I don't know that I did blow it, but I do feel strongly that I sh I recognized how unprepared I was and how I really needed to pick up the game.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that will definitely get you thinking properly when you're prepared.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_01: You obviously have a busy schedule.
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_01: You're an author yourself, you work with authors, you speak.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_01: So how do you balance speaking, publishing, and business management?
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_00: I also have ADHD, so my brain goes faster than my mouth often.
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_00: I have to take time out to make sure I've done lists and use my processes and my systems to keep on top of things.
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_00: I have an amazing team of people that I work with and the authors that I work with as well.
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_00: I just have a system for managing my workflow.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_00: And I also have times when I'm ridiculously prolific with my own writing, and times when I stop doing my own writing.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_00: And that helps me to either catch up or slow down or speed up and things like that as well.
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_00: I guess perhaps possibly the ADHD enables me to have that level of focus when I need to have it and that level of intensity when I need it.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_00: But also it means that I just have to slow down and take time out occasionally to change.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_01: So looking back, what are you most proud of in your career so far?
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_00: There was a book that I did a number of years ago where there's been so many books, and so many that I'm proud of.
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_00: It's like trying to identify your favorite children.
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_00: That's easy.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_00: It just depends what day it is.
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it depends which day it is.
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_00: The book that I'm most proud of is a book that we did back in 2009, and it was about recognizing what child abuse is really all about.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_00: And I proposed the book to the person that wrote it.
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_00: I curated it, I worked with her, I edited, I published it and worked closely with her.
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_00: And then we got to launch the book in Parliament in New Zealand, almost exactly on this date, actually, back then.
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_00: I think it was the 20th of August.
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_00: And that book made such a difference in how people perceived what child abuse was and what they could do to help identify what was real and what was not around the kids or the people that they were identifying or able to be connected with, and dispelled a lot of the myths about what child abuse is and isn't.
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that's the kind of book that made such a difference to other people.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_00: So that is the one that I'm probably the most proud of having been able to work with, because it's probably made the most difference to the most people.
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_01: Awesome.
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_01: We're just about at the end.
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_01: So what do you wish you had known when you'd first started out?
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, how to practice better at being a better speaker, how to work better with other people and find the best experts for getting some jobs done.
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_00: And I've mastered the art of that now, so I have incredible networks of people who are specialists in all kinds of areas.
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_00: What I think I wish I had known was that it was always going to be hard and that often it would be easy.
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_01: That's an interesting way of looking at it.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_00: And when you just keep going, there is a certain level of maturity in the time that you spend in doing something and the expertise that you develop along the way that sometimes you have to actually stop and appreciate for yourself.
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_00: Like Keith Abraham says, you can't go there till you grow there.
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_01: Look, thank you for answering all my questions today.
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_01: Hopefully, our listeners have learned something more about you.
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_01: As there is so many levels to you, having known you for so many years.
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_01: Uh thank you for tuning into the experts' journey.
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_01: If you picked up some useful tips today, please take a moment to subscribe and share this episode with a fellow speaker or expert in your network because it really helps us reach more people.
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_01: Don't forget to check out our books on Amazon, Dixie Start with the Draft, How to Easily Plan and Write a Nonfiction Book, and her other book, Authority Island.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_01: And of course, my book, Microcourse Profits, Build a Seven Figure Income with Bite Sized Courses.
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_01: Both are packed with practical tools and tips to help you grow your business faster.
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_01: We'll catch you next time.
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks, Brent.
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_00: It made it a lot easier than I thought it was going to be.